Olalekan Olanrewaju Bakare
O. O. Bakare1 (Department of Biotechnology, University of the Western Cape, South Africa); A. Pretorius2 (Department of Biotechnology, University of the Western Cape, South Africa; Aminotek Co. Ltd)
Title: In silico Discovery of Biomarkers for the Accurate and Sensitive Diagnosis of Pneumonia
Biography
Biography: Olalekan Olanrewaju Bakare
Abstract
Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death among children under five years of age killing 2500 daily; research has also shown that mortality is also very high in the elderly. Several antibiotics which hitherto have been used in its therapy, lack specificity as they could not differentiate viral from bacterial type of the disease; these antibiotics also fail to establish a distinction between pneumonia and other associated diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). There is a growing consensus, globally, of an improved understanding of the use of new therapeutic agents which are produced in response to pneumonia infection for precision cure to completely overcome these aforementioned limitations. The aim of this research was to use novel antimicrobial peptides that would bind, with greater affinity, to pneumonia receptors for the differential therapy of bacterial and viral pneumonia using In silico approach. These antimicrobial peptides were identified using In silico mathematical algorithms, where their 3-D structures were predicted and docked against the pneumonia proteins. The result showed putative antimicrobials with potential anti-pneumonia properties under high sensitivity, accuracy and specificity to be used in a Point of Care therapy. The tendency of these peptides to detect pneumonia proteins with precision justifies their use for therapeutics, an attempt that would reduce the problems of indiscriminate overuse, toxicity due to wrong prescription, bacterial resistance, scarcity and high cost of existing pneumonia antibiotics.
Keywords: Antimicrobial peptides, drug, resistance, algorithms, bacterial, viral, proteins, receptors